Why Facebook’s Oculus Team Had to Rebuild Some of Its Virtual Reality Software
BERLIN, GERMANY - FEBRUARY 24: A woman puts on the Head-Mounted Display Oculus Rift on February 24, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. Facebook presented its Innovation Hub where new technology and ideas were shown. (Photo by Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images)
Speaking at Facebook’s annual engineering conference on Wednesday in San Jose, Oculus software engineer Khoi Nguyen described the challenges of making a new technology user-friendly.
The original Oculus home screen, which he said was slow and cobbled together, was rebuilt from scratch to ensure everything would run as smoothly as possible. The interface’s design didn’t necessary put off users, Nguyen explained, but rather it was the software plumbing that needed a serious overhaul.
It took seven months to rebuild Oculus Home, which was ready on Nguyen’s birthday, March 16, 2016. The rewritten software makes problems easier to diagnose and fix, he said, and he’s “confident I can jump into any file and know what is going on.”
See the full story here: http://fortune.com/2016/08/31/facebook-oculus-rebuild-virtual-reality-software/